[Update!] H. Comptoniana went crazy with self-pollinating
by PracticeTheory
[Update!] H. Comptoniana went crazy with self-pollinating
by PracticeTheory
2 Comments
Follow up post in case anyone else is interested in this little saga!
I posted back in March about a very old H. Comptoniana spontaneously self-pollinating every flower on the stalk. They ripened and I collected after another 10 days or so, and despite the frequent advice to let the seeds rest for a few months I was itching to sew by April 18th (see above). Those aren’t even all of the seeds, since I sprinkled a few pinches in before thinking to capture the photo – but there were a lot! Some of them appeared to be stunted so I really wasn’t sure what I was going to get.
So I was very very pleased by the first sprout on May 5th! Now there are seven*(!!) visible little guys (not all pictured) and it feels safe to report that self-pollinated (as in, I didn’t do a single thing to help the process) seeds are indeed viable.
This has also had the knock-on effect of getting me to try manually pollinating my other plants instead of just cutting off the flowers. I’m only getting about one viable pod per stalk but hey, it’s fun.
Wow, never seen nearly that many pods on a single stalk before, fingers crossed.